Yes these formulae are silly but experience seems to bear out these basic principles.

The first step is to define your project in precise terms, what do you want
your site to do, why, and how...This is vital and will save untold hours in the long run.

The answer then depends of course on your knowledge and experience, your spec, and how
little you will actually have to code by adapting available modules/code to
your needs.

One problem with modules is that they *can* have a steep learning curve, so
you should possibly stick with the basics. CGI.pm will be essential.

One approach is to try to find a script that fulfills most of your criteria and
then adapt it. Sadly you tend to get what you pay for but of course there are so many
exceptions to this rule...especially in the give and let live Perl community.

CGI.pm is the basis from which to start. It can generate HTML for you as well
as get CGI input. It allows file upload so users could upload say HTML CVs.

Search engines to index your data can be complex to code. In a pinch you might
consider one of the free site search engines. I use http://siteLevel.whatUseek.com
for a cheap and cheerful search, on shoestring sites. You can customise the search interface and the output
template and it is free for ?1000 pages I think. To see simple example in use check out
http://www.fg3.com.au/home.htm. This site (still under construction of course!) took 6 hours to generate, graphics, search, etc.
Try the search, and then look at the 4 lines of source HTML that are
required. If you have CVs and Job Ads as *.html pages that can be spidered this will solve
the search requirement in under an hour. Downside -> ads on result page. Hint, edit the template
and dump the adds to the bottom - if you remove them they get replaced at the top, but if you
move them to the bottom all is OK.

Consider employing a perl consultant to set up at least the basics for you to tweak

It should not be a problem to get modules installed at your ISP, often in your local bin
where you may or may not be able to tweak them. When it comes to CGI most ISPs are aware of the
security risks and have varying policies. Ideally you will want to be able to
freely upload your script during testing but this requires that your ISP trust
your code, or be non security concious. This is a real issue when it comes down
to getting your script running. If you have to get your script vetted (often for a fee!) with each
change the process becomes very slow. This *should* influence your choice of ISP. PS You may not want
your prodution code to reside on an ISP that let's anyone edit their CGIs but.....

Finally (whew got a bit carried away here) if you want to simulate CGI, have relatively little experience,
are familiar with win32 then perlbuilder 2 from solution soft is a very useful program. Trial copy at
www.solutionsoft.com.

Good luck, I'm sure you will have fun discovering the power of Perl, the greatest CGI lang on earth.
If you have specific code problems that the Monks can sink their teeth into you will often
find help here. Homework and writing your code for you is a lottery and you know what the odds are in lotteries!

I know it's a very general question, and impossible to answer, but you are monks after all. I really appreciate the speed of replies.

I have not decided on an ISP yet, but are looking for something in the UK with full CGI and MySQL support. at the moment Internetters seems like a good bet.
I would appreciate other possible ISP's. I have worked with Internetters before, so that is probably why I would go with them. They hosted a site which I developed for my day job and it seems to be OK.

My biggest problems are:
1. I only have FTP access, no Telnet.
2. I don't have access to the Apache error files

Up till now it hasn't been the biggest problems since I developed everything on a development machine and tested it before I uploaded it. The development and hosting environments aren't exactly the same though, which creates a problem now and then.

I am however a bit worried about MySQL development on a remote host with no error logs. Is there any way I can see what is not working without the ubiquitous Internal Server Error message?

My next question regards searching. If I want to search through the MySQL DB, is it going to be as easy as:

SELECT * FROM jobs WHERE creation_date < $search_max_date

or do I need something like siteLevel.whatUseek.com that you suggested?

It's been a while since I did any SQL, but I'm sure that it's not going to be the biggest problem.

Here are a list of what I think needs to be done: (My solution in brackets, comments would be appreciated.)

I am however a bit worried about MySQL development on a remote host with no error logs. Is there any way I can see what is not working without the ubiquitous Internal Server Error message?

Yes; use CGI::Carp qw/fatalsToBrowser/;

This prints nice error messages to the browser; however, if your script dies before compiling, you just get a (fairly) unhelpful "compile error."

If you don't have a command line, maybe you can do your developing on another box somewhere and then move everything to your host? I personally could not bear to write any decently sized script without the debugger.

I do have a development box, so I can make sure that the syntax is correct and it can compile. I will need to test to see if this solves all my problems (probably not), but thanks for the input.

My biggest problem however is not the Perl errors, but possible mySQL errors. I need to set up a testing environment with MySQL and start playing around, but I have no idea what is going to happen if MySQL has problems. Will MySQL return error codes to the CGI that I can catch, or will it just die?

i would wholeheartedly recommend Positive Internet (www.positive-internet.com) if you are looking for an excellent Perl and Mysql hosting company in the UK.

Having used a more well known host before Positive, i can state that the folk there are v helpful and the service is outstanding - they have even installed perl modules that they didn't have but that i wanted to use, which has been great.

Tell them iain sent you if you go with them - they have a nice referral scheme too ;)

also, i can't seem to locate an email address for you if you are looking for help via mail - anyone help?